


Rhopalocera Recorder

by BlackPencilKitten



Series: Loqi Week 2018 [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Butterflies, Gen, Kidnapping, Lucian!Loqi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-12 02:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15985454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackPencilKitten/pseuds/BlackPencilKitten
Summary: They said it was a phase, but it lasted so long.They said it was useless, but he'd prove them all wrong.





	Rhopalocera Recorder

**Author's Note:**

> Day 4's Prompts: First Love and/or Lucian!Loqi
> 
> Credit to my wonderful friend Grif for letting me use their Lucian!Loqi backstory for this fic.

Insomnia’s parks and gardens were always well maintained, hosting a variety of gorgeous flowers and huge trees. Benches and picnic tables were abundant, with winding trails throughout connecting them. A few of them featured ponds, covered in water lilies and home to ducks, geese, and rarely swans. Though popular, they were never overcrowded, always having some sort of breathing space between clusters of families.

The Malacia Gardens were three-year old Loqi Tummelt’s favorite place.

Only a short drive from their home, the gardens were visited bimonthly, exceptions being if there was a cause for celebration, making it three visits in one month. Its main appeal to the kid was all the colors of the flowers making a rainbow-like blur, and though he didn’t understand beauty yet they were still quite Nice. His curiosity ran wild: how are there so many colors, why do some of them have pointy bits,  _ what do you mean we can’t take them home mom? _ His favorite memory was in those gardens, sitting on the grass and watching bugs fly from flower to flower. Some were yellow, fuzzy and made a buzzing sound, some kept closer to the water with see-through wings, but his favorite had wings with cool patterns and a small, black body.

One of them landed on his nose, with wings of yellow and black and the same aura of Curiosity.

When they left the park that day, Loqi asked question after question after what that bug was. A butterfly, he learned, but it wasn’t made of butter and didn’t look like a fly. There were also many kinds, but they didn’t know which one befriended him. Once they got home, they immediately searched online and in their books for a butterfly that matched their description.

The closest match was a Tiger Swallowtail. He couldn’t say it, so he called it a Tisfly.

After that day, he fell in love.

So many kinds, so many colors, so many  _ butterflies _ . It started as drawings on the walls, relocated to paper, then to butterfly hair pins and erasers. Books were bought about them, and even if he couldn’t understand the big words he adored the pictures, giggling as he traced the butterfly’s wings with his fingers. Their life cycle amazed him, and more than once did he ask  _ ‘mom, when will i get a cocoon and wings?’ _ Learning that he couldn’t become one tore him apart, but playing pretend was a good enough alternative.

Unsurprisingly, the butterfly interest soon spread to other bugs. Dragonflies drew his attention at the edge of the pond, and fireflies mesmerized him outside his window. When he learned about the bee’s ability to sting, it led to a temporary fear of them. Soon, however, they joined his interests, along with praying mantises. Spiders were not bugs, and could stay away from him at all times.

As he grew up, his bug phase didn’t turn out to be a phase. It lessened a little but remained a hobby, and he doodled bugs on the corners of his schoolwork or on the board if allowed. School was relatively easy with his parents’ help, but despite his efforts he found himself isolated. Bugs are weird and gross and bad, kids said. Of course, they excluded butterflies, but they weren’t so  _ invested _ in them as he was. They learned of their life cycles to pass, called them neat, and that was it.

There was always the option to get into other things, of course, but Loqi wasn’t interested in anything else at the time. He didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up, he just liked bugs.

Half a year after his eighth birthday, it was decided for him.

Kidnapped in retaliation after losing one of their own subjects, a Niflheim official took him to Gralea, sneered at his hobby, and raised him as a soldier.

Only a week after he arrived, he learned it was better to endure than to complain, to train than to whine. A strict schedule combined with a harsher,  _ ‘better’ _ education left little time for his hobby. Doodles were forbidden and immature, bugs were simply  _ pests _ that should be eradicated, and with his sole interest gone he had no choice but to find a new one.

It started as a feeble attempt to resurrect his love for bugs, gluing and taping pieces together in what could hardly be recognized as a butterfly. The thought arose that he could build working bugs from these, but it sunk shortly after. What was the point of it if it didn’t help Niflheim, and mere minutes after he entered the engineering room he left.

Happiness had no use as an emotion, there’s no point in wanting it.

Years passed as combat, useful science, and politics were drilled into his head. A single mistake could cost him his life, fighting had to be perfect from the start or he wouldn’t last a day outside Gralea. The magitek infantry were at his command, made of wires and bolts and a sick energy he still didn’t understand but it was  _ useful _ , at least. Peace treaties were discussed at the gain of all the area outside of Insomnia, news from Lucis was scoffed and laughed at, and talk of how Tenebrae’s royalty was their  _ property _ never ceased to echo through the land.

What little free time he had Loqi spent in the library, reading up on battle strategies and combat training. More often than not the library was unsupervised, all the troublemaking members of command having been kicked out or killed. The higher ups being too busy with their politics to care about the library so long as nothing was burned, and as he returned his battle strategy book to the shelves he searched for one he hadn’t read yet.

His eyes scanned hundreds of book titles, and as he reached the end of the shelf they passed over a particular title before he took a double take.

Bugs.

Instinctively he scoffed at the thought of a book on such a useless subject being in the keep’s library, but as he resumed his search on a different shelf he found himself returning multiple times just to read the title again.

After enough disappointment with his search, he sighed and pulled out the bug book, checking the time before finding a seat to read. Unsurprisingly, the pages that had received the most wear with dog ears and even sections being written in were those on poisonous, dangerous species, notes often being how Niflheim’s military could use these tactics in war. Surprisingly, there were pages on butterflies, citing their use of mimicking poisonous species and illusionary intimidation as their use. The thought passed by that perhaps fake bugs could be used to acquire information, if they were small enough while still holding systems needed for info intake. They’d mimic the real, harmless bugs, unless someone had a flyswatter, shoe, or a fear of butterflies, and if they were built to be solar powered, they’d rarely run out of energy.

Loqi latched onto that thought, grabbed the thickest engineering book he could find, and took both books from the library.

For months he pored over those two books, then many more, relocating his most used free time location to the engineering room. Pieces broke, attached wrong, and were rarely ever the right size, and making intelligence collecting systems for such small creations was no easy task. Multiple times he had to take days off to take out built-up rage in extended training or otherwise scream and punch the pillow in his room. Success and an end seemed to never get closer, and many times he debated if this stupid ‘idea’ was even worth the time and effort he put into it. No matter what, though, he kept going, he built and rebuilt and researched and studied, striving for at least  _ one _ working creation.

After over a year of trial and error, small explosions and high pitched screes, a mechanical butterfly came to life. A system to receive and track its collected data had yet to be made, but as Loqi watched his robot fly around his little workshop, his chest swelled with pride, a wide smile on his face.

The butterfly landed on his nose, moving its antenna with apparent… curiosity? His plan was put on hold as he held out his finger, the robot looking at it before flying to it. Its wings rose and fell with a sense of calmness, and while it rested he looked over his countless notes again. The first hundred repeated the phrase ‘enough intelligence to gather data’, but farther down the line it was shortened to ‘sapience.’

He supposed his notes were still correct, although he made sure he hadn’t wrote ‘domestication’ down anywhere. Regardless, he looked back to find his butterfly gone from his finger, and after frantically looking around his station he registered the feeling of something on his head. Hesitantly, he rose a hand and carefully, gentle, tapped the robotic bug with a finger.

It whirred in what could only be assumed as  _ happiness _ .

There might be tears falling, it was hard to tell through jumbled thoughts and emotions. This was a project meant for surveillance, for reconnaissance, it wasn’t supposed to be a  _ pet _ . At least he knew  _ how _ to make more of these, but he’d have to make some adjustments to make sure they understood what a  _ job _ was and to hopefully edit out this...attachment, his first one held. As disappointed and happy as he was, though, he knew he loved his creation too much to tear it apart for being imperfect.

As the bug relocated itself to crawl along the table, Loqi jotted down a name for it on an empty section of his notes, along with making mental notes to hide his new companion from the officials.

**Huriya** , his new companion, his first creation, and his first  **_friend_ ** .


End file.
